Team Spirit and NaVi advance to EPL S17 Mid Bracket Group D Final

The third day of ESL Pro League S17 Group D matches has ended, and we have NaVi and Team Spirit winning their respective matches and will fight for the third playoff spot. On the other hand, this means that Team Liquid’s debacle continues, as they failed against their Russian counterparts in the semifinals of the Mid Bracket.

Rare Atom, on the other hand, continues to show excellent quality at the moment, and despite losing to NaVi, we can see that the Chinese CS:GO level has increased significantly.

Team Spirit gives Team Liquid a second blow and sends them to the Lower Bracket

Team Spirit reached the semifinals of the Mid Bracket, proving that their victory against Astralis in the first match of the group was no coincidence because this time, against another great team like Team Liquid, they gave another lesson on how to play CS:GO collectively.

The series occurred in Nuke (Spirit) and Mirage (Liquid), where the Russians were much more than the Americans and managed to win 2-0.

Nuke

In Nuke, Team Spirit started with a spectacular level showing why this map had been their choice to start the series. First, on the T side, all the team players exceeded double figures in kills, and, in addition, they all finished with more than a 1.20 Rating, according to HLTV. Thanks to this, Spirit took the first half with a comfortable 10-5. At the change of sides, Liquid tried to react by winning the first three rounds, but with the gun in hand, the Russians managed to finish the map with a 16-10 victory.

Mirage

In Mirage, it seemed that history would repeat itself, but in reverse, Team Liquid, led by Keith “NAF” Markovic (84.9 ADR and 1.47 Rating), achieved a partial victory in the first half of the T-side with a score of 10-5. Everything seemed to indicate that the Americans would send the series to the third map as they got to 12-6 at some point in the game. However, Team Spirit woke up incredibly and won 10 of the next 11 rounds to take an excellent 16-13 victory.

NaVi suffers against Rare Atom but delivers and advances to the Mid Bracket Final

We observed something that seemed improbable before Group D started these first three days. First, it is worth noting that ENCE and forZe managed to grab the first two spots in the EPL S17 playoffs, which means that one of the three favorites, NaVi, Astralis, and Team Liquid, will be left out. Second, the underdog teams have put on a spectacular show throughout this tournament, and Rare Atom has been one of them.

After the victory against Astralis on the first day, the Chinese fell to ENCE in the semifinals of the Upper Bracket 1-2. So now, they came to this match against NaVi with very low odds of winning, and although they failed, they made Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev and his NaVi suffer.

The game was decided on three maps, Inferno (Rare Atom), Nuke (NaVi), and Overpass (Decider).

Inferno

The Chinese would hit first in this series thanks to a spectacular level demonstrated by Qianhao “Moseyuh” Chen, who finished the first map with 99.5 ADR and a 1.35 Rating, according to HLTV. NaVi had three opportunities to define the first map in their favor, as they were up 15-12; the Chinese team managed to send the game to Overtime and win it later with a 19-17.

Nuke

In Nuke, NaVi had to give a blow on the table and show why they are still considered one of the best CS:GO teams in the world and achieved a comfortable victory with a 16-4. Denis “electroNic” Sharipov and Valeriy “b1t” Vakhovskiy carried NaVi on this map and took the series to the third and decisive match.

Overpass

The deciding map, Overpass, was more of the same. While Rare Atom showed a bit more resilience by finishing the first half with five consecutive round wins, they could not do more than one round when the sides switched. As a result, NaVi takes a comfortable 16-7 victory and thus advances to the grand final of the Mid Bracket, where a place in the ESL Pro League S17 Playoffs is at stake against Team Spirit.

Header: ESL